Kaia Daughter of the Sea

by H.E. Thomas, P.D. Garty

The ocean has a voice and Kaia hears its call. On her eighteenth birthday she is forced to choose whether to remain herself or become a creature of the sea. Can she learn the true identity of the mysterious LS who has advised her via text messages for six years? Will James, her sailing instructor, become more than her friend? One choice leads to another and takes her into troubled waters until she must risk everything to save her family and kin.

329 pages, Kindle Edition

First published March 13, 2014

Reviews

[D · Rating 1 out of 5]

I picked up this book because it seemed to be highly inspired by 'The Little Mermaid' and because I love selkies. Unfortunately, there were no actual selkies in the story (as they were orcas) and the plot was muddled, nearly incomprehensible, and difficult to slog through for any length of time. There seemed to be something about environmentalist practices spliced with long conversations about the main character's reputation (and her love interest and grandfather discussing whether or not she was a virgin). Evil(TM) characters announced to one another what they were going to do and how they were going to use their sexuality to do it. Evil and sexuality was tied together far more than I was comfortable with and it seemed almost obsessively mentioned. Again, the idea of reputation was repeated more times than I can could but only seemed to matter when it came to whether or not the main character was compromised, even though this book had a modern setting.

The love interest actually asked the main character if she were 'frigid' while they were fooling around, much to my bafflement.

Honestly, I feel like there might be a salvageable concept at the core of this book. It's unfortunate that the rampant slut shaming (and the idea that there are only two kinds of women: sluts or virgins and you can imagine which the main character falls into) and long internal monologue about how she just wasn't like every other human girl ruined reading it for me.

The book was also in need of some serious editing. Tenses shifted multiple times and POVs would shift in the middle of a paragraph between characters and then again on whether it was first or third person. It made the text even more difficult to read.